


Never wanted to dance (with nobody but you)

by teskodanceparty



Series: Shifters of Anarchy [2]
Category: Sons of Anarchy
Genre: M/M, Shifter Verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2012-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-28 21:48:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/312519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teskodanceparty/pseuds/teskodanceparty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The thing was, he tended to fall in love easy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never wanted to dance (with nobody but you)

Kip knows as soon as he rolled into Charming in the beat down '64 Nova he'd scammed off of some asshole on the outskirts of Lodi in a game of pool. He could smell it as he drove up County 18, getting stronger the closer he got to town until he'd thought maybe he should just move past this one. He'd figured out that shifters in large groups, packs, whatever they called themselves, didn't take kindly to someone new pissing in their back yard.

So of course his car broke down on what appeared to be Main Street. And while that sucked more than he could possibly express, that was also how he met Juice. Which is actually on the list of the top 10 shining moment of his life. Hearing that he'd shifted soon enough after that shit storm mission and had saved one of his balls was still number one; probably would be until he died, but that's totally not the point.

The point is that as soon as he dropped out of the driver's side door, landed face first on the pavement and almost kicked the door shut on the foot still in the car, immediately being pulled to his feet by this human sized smile.

"Hey! Shit, man are you okay?" The smile asked him and he blinked, still having trouble figuring how he went from on his face to on his feet so fast.

"Uh...?" He says eloquently. He rubs at his jaw, bits of gravel and dust falling off his face and the smile that turns out to be a guy, about his age in baggy jeans, a t-shirt, and a haircut Kip could never make work. The guy is still smiling as he talks, all goofy and open and so fucking bright it's like staring into the sun and Kip can smell him, smell the earnest excitement laced with the unmistakable scent of wolf. He can't help thinking  _pack_  even though he knows better than to make that assumption.  
   
His name is Juice and he has the tow truck, says it all in a single breath as he hooks the Nova up to said tow truck. The ride to the shop takes about 7 minutes, and it takes maybe 2 for him to decide he really likes Juice. Even if his name is dumb and he has tattoos on his head.

They hop out of the truck once they pull onto the lot at teller-morrow auto and the smells practically slap him in the face. His shoulders are slumped and he's trying his hardest to seem small and harmless. It's late Tuesday afternoon and too close to the full moon for him not notice every little thing, the way the temperature shifts, the hint of Irish spring coming off Juice, the fruity shampoo the lady driving out of the lot is wearing.

All of that almost smothered by the stench of a handful of different kinds of shifters. One of them smells him, and turns and he can see the shadow of Juice's wolf out of the corner of his eye, it's hackles raised even as Juice is very pointedly staring at his boots. 

The new guy circles him, than Juice, stops when he's facing them both again and narrows his eyes. They're a bright blue, cold and calculating; the color of anti-freeze a stark contrast against his mess of hair. He's watching him like a hawk and Kip freezes. It's totally appropriate, explains the way Juice is avoiding his eyes.

"Bringing home strays now, dumb ass?" The older man asks, voice gruff and it's obvious even before he says anything that he knows what Kip is, looks down a crooked nose at him and snorts a laugh, shaking his head as he walks away and Juice follows.

They have his car fixed by Friday, and Tig (still jokingly being called hawkeye in his internal monologue) tells him a time and a place, rolling his eyes as he hands him the keys.

-:-

It's the first time he's run with a pack that actually worked since before he was overseas, never mind the fact that half of them are birds as big as a St. Bernard and there's a bear he's not sure about and is avoiding so he doesn't end the night with claws in his side. He runs, Juice snapping playfully at his sides and grins toothily, gets a baring of teeth in return and has to duck as one of the guys swoops in close.

He's the first to shift back, teeth shrinking as howls turn to swears once his throat is righted. There's nothing magical about the change, like at all. The affects of it on his senses, sure. But the actual changing into a different creature, bones crunching and sliding back into place, muscles groaning and stretching until he's Kip Epps again is not even kinda fun. 

He's still breathing hard, a hand pressed flat against his ribs because he's pretty sure he's got at least a bruised rib or two. There's a whistle from his side and he turns fast, winces before he sees Juice jogging towards him. He immediatly loses the fight against the blush that creeps into his cheeks and even if he can't see it, Juice's nose should have picked it up before he stamped it down. His control is always a little shot right after, and it's been years since he saw someone naked who he was actually attracted to. The military had made that a real bitch.

"You're a skinny fucker, ya know that?" Juice says, and if Juice is ignoring it so can he. He shrugs, hand coming up and rubbing at the back of his neck.

"Yeah, I guess," and he hates it, was actually kicked out of the last pack for being so much smaller than the rest of them, but fuck if he knew how to bulk up a werewolf.  _'Maybe bench pressing a riding lawn mower?'_  He thinks as he says, "Was that a bear that tried to take a swipe at us?"

Juice laughs. Both of them standing there naked as the day they were born, talking about a near miss bear attack, and he laughs.

"Dude, that was Piney. He's kind of a dick, but he's cool. Just avoid him next time." Juice says, like it's the simplest fucking thing, like he's being an idiot for thinking he's not welcome back here.

Juice starts to walk away, shaking his head and laughing and he is made very aware of the view from behind being just as good as the front before Juice is turning, smile stretching slow across his face.

"You can go again, right." Juice asks, making it more of a statement. There's a 50/50 chance he's imagining the way Juice's eyes slide down his body, but he's not gonna test it, just nods and blushes again.

"So are you just gonna stand there and stare or are we gonna run ginger?" Juice asks, grins, and then there is a wolf, about the size of a pony, slate gray and teeth gleaming where a man was standing a moment before. It's the fastest shift he's ever seen, and it trots to him, bumps it's head against his hip, nips at his side and runs to a tree a few yards away. He's pretty sure it's wagging it's big wolfy tail, but he's shifted by than too, jogging to stand next to the gray wolf. He's smaller through the shoulders, sleek fur a few shades darker than his hair is. They run for hours, looping between trees and tumbling over each other's feet, and hunting once they get hungry until exhaustion sweeps them under.

He wakes up slow, dead grass poking at him in sensitive places, his arm thrown over his eyes to block out the sun, another hand pressed against his ribs over what he's sure will be a spectacular bruise by the end of the day. He turns his head just enough, and obviously it's Juice but seeing him there spreads warmth through his chest. 

Juice is smiling in his sleep, and even with the dust and dried mud and the stripe of blood down the side of his face it makes his stomach flip pleasantly. He has a moment, a vividly clear moment where he can pull away, knows he should because this feeling is stupidly familiar and beyond inconvenient, but he doesn't move. Instead he scoots closer, drops his head onto Juice's arm and doesn't wake up again until he's being shaken and having his pants thrown at his head.

-:-

He sticks around, because its not like he has anywhere else to go. When he asks to be a prospect he half expects Juice to be his sponser, sees it flicker over his face before he looks away and Chibs takes the reins. It could be worse, he could have wound up with Tig, but he can live with this.

He still drives the nova once a month, even after he gets his own dyna and Juice still tags along with him. And if they're a little rougher than they probably should be when they're far enough into the woods to roll and fight, well than that could be worse too. They're best friends except for how they aren't, they passed that the first week after they met and have been scrambling for footing ever since.

-:-

He had loved  ~~Rita~~  Cherry. From the moment he saw her, really. She was small at the same time as she was larger than life, sharp and sweet in all the right ways. She made him laugh, even though he could almost hear Juice grinding his teeth from across the lot. He's had to sit back and watch that asshole fall asleep in nothing but his boots and whatever leggy blond he pulled, figures fair is fair and leaves it at that because he's drunk and analyzing relationships over bottles of whiskey is Chibs' thing.

Even when she was threatening to rat on his club and had to flee the country to get away from the feds, he fucking adored her.

Yeah, he'd heard about that.

He didn't blame her for that one, not entirely. He thinks if he hadn't known what he did before joining up, hadn't been through the army as what he was, been so for years before that, he might have freaked too.

-:-

He's been awake all of three hours in as many days, is finally managing to stay awake long enough to catch a full 30 minutes of Beavis and Butthead, when he hears the scratch of a key in his front door. He doesn't try to get up or smell who it is, senses muzzled by whatever pain meds the doc had given him. He hoped it was Tara actually; his bandaged side itches and he's getting a little antsy being cooped up for so long.

But the door slams open and that alone tells him it isn't her, she was more likely to sneak in when he'd finally caved and gotten a beer, fixing him with disappointed eyes than slamming doors.

"Hey Juice, beers in the fridge." he says because he's laid up and fucking exhausted but he can still see the fight in the other man's shoulders as he storms in. Juice stares for a minute, and even through the haze of medication, pain, and day time tv he's nearly bowled over by worry, even as Juice starts to pace and swear under his breath.

"That's all you have to fucking say, after you pull this- you... You're a fucking idiot you know that?" Juice seethed, making him wince.

"Yeah, well if that's all your here for you can fuck right off J," he waved a hand towards the door and took a pull off his bottle of root beer. Juice sat on the end of the couch farthest from him, glaring, anger tinged with something, until he rolled his eyes, adding "Tone that shit down though man, I can practically hear you cursing my family in the Spanish you think in."

"I don't speak Spanish, asshole." Juice countered.

"Puerto Rican, whatever."

That earned him a laugh, both of them breaking out into a smile.

They spent a week like that, days starting with Juice making them breakfast on the couch and ending with him leaning heavily against Juice's side. If Juice was unnaturally quiet whenever Tara came to check up on him or he had trouble sleeping at all they didn't talk about it, sticking to mocking late night infomercials and playing call of duty into the night.

-:-

It hits him the first time they have a family dinner at Gemma's, two months later once he's healed up.

He's on the couch, watching cartoon network with the kids, waiting for one of the ladies to call them to table. Juice pops his head around the wall seperating the dining room from the den and he's only there for a second but it's long enough for him to note the stubble along his jaw, the bags under his eyes and the fact that he's growing his hair out a bit. He smiles, starts to stretch and stops when he hears Tara walk by knowing she'd frown at him for it.

He's got two fingers grasped in Abel's fist, singing the theme to the power puff girls to him when Juice comes into the room, a bottle in each hand. He glances up and sees him staring, looks down at Abel sitting next to him speaking baby gibberish, his little hand clutching onto his fingers and looks up again. Juice's smile is all soft around his eyes, brows drawn together, hip cocked and it sends little waves of something pleasantly warm through his stomach having Juice look at him like that and...

 _Oh_

Oh fuck.

-:-

The thing he was being reminded of was, he tended to fall in love easy. His mom, before she went seriously off her nut, told him his dad was just the same. The man hadn't stuck around long enough for him to know, so he guesses that's as good a point towards that theory as any.

He went head over heels for Susie Rendover in the first grade and crazy for Jackie Burkheart in front of the tv every week. It wasn't until he hit 16 and figured the dreams about running across a beach into the arms of Jordan Catalano were a big hint about his sexuality. The stutter he seemed to pick up every time his history teacher, Mr. West, singled him out was another one.

So it's not like he's totally in the dark about how he can feel, or that said feelings are just as likely to happen around a man as they do around a woman but... But Juice is as close to a best friend as he's ever had and feeling this about him fucking sucks.

"Suucks!" he whines, flopping back against the couch he's sitting on and jumps when he hears someone laugh at him.

"Hey Tara." he grumbles and she smiles, sits on the arm of the couch he's on in Jax's living room, leans into his space and brushes his hair out of his face.

"You need a hair cut, I think," she says and her voice is soft and even as always. He can't imagine her being anything but calm, though he's seen it firsthand. He huffs, pushes her hand away, brings her in against his side in a one armed hug. She chuckles, presses a kiss to his cheek and gathers Abel from his spot on the floor as she sits up.

"Now what sucks so much?" she asks him, not taking her eyes off the boy in her arms. He made a face at Abel and Tara rolled her eyes.

"Quit using my son as an excuse to stall," she chided, laughing when he pressed a hand to his chest and looked offended, "Does whatever sucks have something to do with the spike in testosterone every time you and Juice are in a room together?" she added calmly, only smiling when he sputtered.

"I- you- what?" He manages and she turns to him, looks him over like he's in an exam room when she's making rounds, tilts her head and he's never seen her shift, just knows that she's capable of it but the face she makes as she exhales sharply through her nose makes him think of something cute you'd see in the aquatic area at the zoo.

"Kip, I like you, and Abel likes you and..." she trails off and he knows what she's going to say.

He'd taken a knife in the lungs to keep them safe, had had just enough presence of mind to shift even as he drowned on his own blood, chasing after the man who took her son with a whine thrown in Tara's direction before he went. They'd found him, wound healed but not enough, arm cradled around Abel as carefully as he could manage, face and chest covered in blood, before he'd loss consciousness.

"When they brought you back, and you had saved Abel... I thought it was too late." Tara says. Her hands are straightening Abel's clothes and this is inconvenient, like so much of his life, but he's not stopping her. It's been months since it happened and he hasn't talked to anyone about it, doubts Tara has either. Abel's first birthday party is as appropriate as it gets.

"I thought it was too late and I couldn't care about it, not like I should have because you saved him," she's almost whispering now but turns when she says his name. "Kip, you saved him, and I knew that but I would have let you die if Juice hadn't stormed in and threatened every single person in that room. I've never seen him like that, not for anyone else." she smiles, drawing his hand into her own and waiting.

Tig stomps past them, grabbing a beer in the kitchen, squeezing Tara's shoulder briefly on his way back outside.

"So," he starts, still rolling it around in his mind, "huh." he says, and Tara snorts a laugh as she stands with Abel on her hip.

"that's all you're getting from me on the subject, come help me with the cake."

-:-

When they kiss it's kind of an accident but that's cool, all his plans so far had pretty much consisted of some serious romantic comedy shit that he's blaming all the time he's spent with Tara while he was healing.

He's been thinking over the why's and how's a lot lately, is doing just that as he shows the new prospects where to put stock when someone bumps him and he slams into the wall in front of him. Juice is grinning at him, eyebrow arched in a challenge as he says, "Watch where you're going prospect," and walks out onto the lot.

He doesn't think about not following, and when he sees the pile of clothes on the roof of his Nova he just strips and shifts, picking up the scent and following it for miles to where the grey wolf is sprawled out in the sun. He growls when he gets close, pounces before the bigger wolf has time to react and lands across his chest, shifted back out.

"I'm not the prospect anymore," he growls again, voice rough from the quick change and Juice shifts under him, is breathing hard once he's human again, "You dick." he puncuates it with a fist to his side and Juice just laughs, rolling out from under him. He is able to get his hands up to protect his face before Juice rolls back in, landing on top of him.

If he wasn't as pissed off as he was he might have hesitated, realized that they were both naked and rolling around in the mud miles away from their clothes or a hot shower. Instead he just pushes at Juice's chest, gets a leg free and tries to bring it up hard between Juice's legs, freezes when he does more gently than he'd meant to and Juice groans, dropping his head on his shoulder.

"Sorry." he mumbles automatically and Juice laughs.

"M'not," Juice says, voice low and rough, " Come'ere." he gives him just enough space to move. Their faces are maybe inches apart and they're both breathing hard when he meets Juice's eyes he sees the shadow of his wolf flit through his eyes.

"Yeah, alright." he mutters and pulls Juice down to him, hands on either side of his face as he kisses him and Juice laughs into it even as he's moving, pulling him up and straddling his thighs.

The hot slide of Juice's tongue over his bottom lip and than in his mouth is borderline filthy in all the right ways and he's acutely aware of the fact that they're both naked but can't bring himself to care. He's panting against Juice's neck and Juice is sucking and biting a hickey just under his ear and rolls his hips down and,

"Fuck," he gasps and feels Juice nod, stubble on his cheek scraping against his beard, "Should we?" he asks and he's not sure what he's asking but he hopes the answer is yes. Juice's face is flushed, what little hair he has is sticking up in odd tufts, his mouth slick and bruised from kissing, and he doesn't try to fight down the gut-punch of lust that hits him, just watches as Juice licks his lips and grins in response.

"Yeah, not here though." Juice says, grins as he helps him stand and pulls him flush against his chest. He gets hit with the sudden feeling of  _pack_  and  _home_ , smiles as Juice presses a kiss into the pulse in his neck and turns away. He shifts with a laugh that turns into a bark and Juice is running right beside him.


End file.
